Foursquare now lets businesses add their own events to listings

On Thursday, Foursquare announced an update aimed at businesses: the ability to add events to their listings. The company is touting it as a new way for businesses to leverage the location-based social network over at business.foursquare.com.

While there are already movie, concert, and sporting events in the Foursquare app, which anyone can see and edit for themselves, this addition allows businesses to add their own. The company has a few suggestions: a trivia tournament, open mic night, wine tasting, book signing, author appearance, arts and crafts fair, and a fundraising event.

This rather small screenshot shows the new feature in action:

Foursquare even offers guidance on how businesses should try to woo its users:

• When they’re deciding where to go next. Draw them through the door with events you’re already hosting.
• When they check in at your business. Add events to encourage people to check in – plus their friends will see it in the app (and might stop by!).
• When they look at their check-in history. Help them record their experiences and remember what a great time they had at your event.

In other words, get them at every chance you can! This is a great move for Foursquare, its business, and the businesses that use it. On the other hand, it’s a controversial one for users: whether or not they will like it will depend on how many events they are spammed with. I’m sure Foursquare tested this part out carefully.

As my colleague Robin Wauters points out, however, the feature will likely be used quite a bit at conferences. Who knows! Maybe we’ll even use it at ours.

See also – Foursquare announces new $10 verification fee for businesses to claim their venue and Foursquare isn’t just for exploring, with “Local Updates” you can connect with nearly 1M merchants

Image credit: Stephenson F